A. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to network management, and more particularly, to the application of Extended Markup Language (“XML”) over Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”) management protocol in communication networks.
B. Background of the Invention
In a telecommunication or data communication network system, various network elements (“NEs”) are connected for communicating information or messages from one NE to another. The connection between these NEs may be logical or physical. Standard protocols are used to enable these NEs to communicate. Apart from these standard protocols, a management application is also required in order to configure these elements NEs and monitor the communication process.
A typical management application for a communication network may conFig. traffic circuits, or it may monitor the NEs to check for any fault occurrence in the equipment and subsequently employ the corrective actions accordingly from a central management station. Some management applications use the TCP/IP protocol to transport management data in the form of discrete packets, in which the Internet Protocol (“IP”) provides the actual routing and delivery of data and the Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”) keeps track of the packets for the reliable transport of data through the Internet.
As part of NE management, the network operator may directly communicate with and manage an NE from a Network Operation Centers (“NOC”). In a long-haul communications network having a large number of concatenated NEs which are privately addressed within the network, it may so happen that management messages may be able to reach these destination NE's only via tunneling through one or more publicly IP addressable NE's, also termed as Gateway Network Elements (“GNEs”).
FIG. 1 is a flowchart illustrating an approach for the management of a large number of NEs within a network. In particular, an Element Management System (“EMS”) application is employed 101 and dedicated connections between the EMS and these privately addressed NE's, also termed as subtending network elements (“SNEs”), are maintained 102. A static port configuration on each GNE device is maintained 103 in order to relay traffic to a particular SNE device. In order to operate properly, this approach requires all GNE devices to maintain the static mapping to all SNE devices in the network 104, which is unwieldy and not scalable. Furthermore, the port assignment is required to be configured and maintained by a network administrator, which is prone to error. Any addition of new SNE or GNE devices 105, 106 further requires updating of coordinated configuration at all the GNE devices. Furthermore, each SNE device requires a separate dedicated connection (direct or indirect) to the EMS.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating another management approach that employs an EMS application 201 wherein a “Man-Machine Language,” such as Transaction Language 1 (“TL1”), is used. TL1 manages messages in such a manner that the messages are readable and writeable to a system administrator as well as machines within the network. Basically, TL1 provides a command line interface (“CLI”) that enables a user to control a NE. TL1 also enables NEs to send event data to an Operations Support System or Element Management System. XML management traffic is converted into TL-1 commands at the GNE device 202. Subsequently, the TL-1 TID (TARP) specification is used to manage SNE devices 203 and the traffic is relayed to the appropriate SNE 204.
This approach requires that each XML command have a TL-1 equivalent. Furthermore, TL-1 event notifications from a SNE device are required to be converted at a GNE device into their XML form without loss of information 205. These requirements limit the capability and efficiency of the management of the NEs.
What is required is a system, device and method that addresses the above-described drawbacks in the prior art.